The Unknown Florida

One of the rare bicycle and pedestrian friendly structures in Tallahassee is the Capital Cascades Trail. I already described the path of the trail in another blog-post (https://my-tallahassee.com/2022/11/25/capital-cascades-trail/), but in a nutshell it starts at the northern end of the St. Marks Trail, right at the roundabout connecting FAMU Way, Gamble Street and Mill Street south of Lake Alberta and then it travels north to end at the intersection of Franklin Boulevard and East Tennessee Street. Right at the start the trail passes by the Skateable Art Park that opened in June 2022 after one or two years of construction during the initial phase of the pandemic. As the name suggests, it is basically a skate park where folks, young and older, can take their skateboards, roller-skates, or BMX bikes to get a good workout and perhaps a few bruises. As the park is based at FAMU Way, just north of the namesake campus, there is a large sculpture of the university mascot, a rattler, located within the skating ring.

While one can (or cannot?) make a reasonable case for this sculpture being classified as some kind of art, currently there is not much more art around to be seen. At the moment it is foremost a skate park. However, I assume that will change in the foreseeable future. The skatepark is at an ideal location between Florida State and Florida A&M Universities so that students from both schools can go and work out there between classes. There is also plenty of parking available if someone comes by car. We have been to the park mostly in the evening or early night on our bike tours. Right after the park opened in the summer, it was always well attended with a diverse group of mostly teens and twenty-somethings skating, socializing and smoking. We haven’t seen any beer drinkers around, except us, so it seems that the skating community is more into marijuana (you smell it often at the park) and perhaps other drinkable or eatable substances; by now there are many kava and kratom bars in College Town, Railroad Square and vicinity.